Active Grants/Awards

As part of the NIH Common Fund’s Bridge2AI program, the CM4AI data generation project seeks to map the spatiotemporal architecture of human cells and use these maps toward the grand challenge of interpretable genotype-phenotype learning. In genomics and precision medicine, machine learning models are often "black boxes," predicting phenotypes from genotypes without understanding the mechanisms by which such translation occurs. 

To address this deficiency, project will launch a coordinated effort involving three complementary mapping approaches – proteomic mass spectrometry, cellular imaging, and genetic perturbation via CRISPR/Cas9 – creating a library of large-scale maps of cellular structure/function across demographic and disease contexts. These data will broadly stimulate research and development in "visible" machine learning systems informed by multi-scale cell and tissue architecture. In addition to data and tools, this project will implement a standards data management approach based on FAIR access and software principles, with deep provenance and replication packages for representation of cell maps and their underlying datasets; initiate a research program in ethical AI, especially as it relates to how maps will be used in genomic medicine and model interpretation; and stimulate a diverse portfolio of training opportunities in the emerging field of biomachine learning.

Algorithms are at the forefront of a transformative shift in the World of Work, profoundly influencing work dynamics, organizational structures, and the work environment. Despite their profound impact, a substantial knowledge gap exists concerning algorithmic management (AM) and its repercussions on occupational safety, health, and wellbeing. This gap is particularly pronounced in non-platform work settings, where AM's prevalence is growing. As the use of AM continues to expand across various economic sectors, it is imperative to investigate its effects on the wellbeing of workers. The overarching objective of the ALGOSH research program is to enhance our understanding of AM in non-platform sectors and its impact on the health, safety, and wellbeing of workers. Moreover, it aims to develop tools and strategies to mitigate associated risks. 

The three research aims of ALGOSH are: Facilitating the development of a standard for measurement of algorithmic management at work and related risks for health, safety and well-being. Increasing knowledge about the effects of algorithmic management on workers’ health, safety, and well-being. Investigating the balance of interests related to the control of algorithms in different legal contexts regarding occupational health and safety (OSH). To accomplish this mission, an international and interdisciplinary consortium of researchers has been assembled. For our research to have maximum societal impact, the program also has a strong stakeholder involvement and support from trade unions, business organizations, international bodies, and government agencies. Their collective efforts will examine, discuss, and assess the opportunities and challenges posed by algorithmic management, fostering a safer and healthier work environment for all. The program applies multiple methods including quantitative, qualitative, literature reviews and participatory research. 

In the United States, more than a third of patients are referred to a specialist each year, and specialist visits constitute more than half of outpatient visits. Even though all physicians highly value communication between primary care providers (PCPs) and specialists, both PCPs and specialists cite the lack of effective information transfer as one of the most significant problems in the referral process. Therefore, it is critical to investigate a new method to improve communication during care transitions. With their ubiquitous use, it is recognized that electronic health records (EHRs) should ensure a seamless flow of information across healthcare systems to improve the referral process. But, a lack of accessible and relevant information in the referral process remains a pressing problem. Recently, emerging deep learning (DL) and natural language processing (NLP) methods have been successfully applied in extracting pertinent information from EHRs and generating text summarization to improve care quality and patient outcomes. However, existing technologies cannot be applied to process heterogeneous data from EHRs and create high-quality clinical summaries for communicating a reason for referral. 

Responding to PA-20-185, this project will develop and validate a novel informatics framework to collect and synthesize longitudinal, multimodal EHR data for automatic referral form generation and summarization. While the referring provider and specialist can be any type of provider for any condition, the focus in this application has been on headache for primary care, because it is an extremely common symptom and affects people of all ages, races, and socioeconomic statuses. More importantly, relevant information needed for headache referrals has been defined in local and national evidence-based practice guidelines. Therefore, a health information technology solution to make these data accessible will empower communication between PCPs and specialists, which can improve the care of millions of patients suffering from disabling headache disorders. 

Based on our preliminary data and our experience with an interdisciplinary team of data scientists and physicians, we plan to execute specific aims: 1) Convert text-based guidelines into a standards-based algorithm for electronic implementation; 2) develop models to automatically populate data from EHR and clinical notes to fill the referral form; 3) create a framework to summarize the longitudinal clinical notes to fill out the referral form; and 4) develop and validate the headache referral system with a user-centered design approach. The research proposed in this project is novel and innovative because it will produce and rigorously test new solutions to improve the communication between health professionals to ensure that safe, high-quality care is provided and care continuity is maintained. The success of this project will (1) fill important gaps in our knowledge of understanding the types of information exchange that will optimize patient care during transitions and (2) provide evidence-based solutions to enable the exchange.

This project proposes to investigate how GLAM institutions and humanities researchers can help to address knowledge gaps by contributing their local collections, metadata, and records to Wikidata. Many GLAM institutions and projects from humanities scholars (e.g. the Womenʼs Print History Project, a bibliographical database) hold valuable information andhistorical artifacts that have the potential to fill critical knowledge gaps on Wikidata; however, these contributors often lack visibility into what knowledge gaps their local databases are well positioned to address. This limits their ability to effectively organize their efforts and fulfill their mission of sharing human knowledge and mitigating epistemic injustice.

The goal is to develop an assessment tool that can highlight what past contributions are particularly valuable for addressing knowledge gaps and providing unique coverage relative to other knowledge technologies (search engines and LLMs). This tool will help GLAM and humanities contributors to better understand the unique value of their various contributions and make informed decisions about their future focus. The successful completion of the project will help GLAM institutions and humanities scholars optimize their efforts to mitigate the most critical gaps in the knowledge ecosystem.

The recent COVID-19 pandemic has revealed the fragility of humankind. In our highly connected world, infectious disease can swiftly transform into worldwide epidemics. A plague can rewrite history and science can limit the damage. The significance of teamwork in science has been extensively studied in the science of science literature using transdisciplinary studies to analyze the mechanisms underlying broad scientific activities. How can scientific communities rapidly form teams to best respond to pandemic crises? Artificial intelligence (AI) models have been proposed to recommend scientific collaboration, especially for those with complementary knowledge or skills. But issues related to fairness in teaming, especially how to balance group fairness and individual fairness remain challenging. Thus, developing fair AI models for recommending teams is critical for an equal and inclusive working environment. Such a need could be pivotal in the next pandemic crisis. 

This project will develop a decision support system to strengthen the US-Australia public health response to infectious disease outbreak. The system will help to rapidly form global scientific teams with fair teaming solutions for infectious disease control, diagnosis, and treatment. The project will include participation of underrepresented groups (Indigenous Australians and Hispanic Americans) and will provide fair teaming solutions in broad working and recruiting scenarios. 

This project aims to understand how scientific communities have responded to historical pandemic crises and how to best respond in the future to provide fair teaming solutions for new infectious disease crises. The project will develop a set of graph representation learning methods for fair teaming recommendation in crisis response through: 1) biomedical knowledge graph construction and learning, with novel models for emerging bio-entity extraction, relationship discovery, and fair graph representation learning for sensitive demographical attributes; 2) the recognition of fairness and the determinant of team success, with a subgraph contrastive learning-based prediction model for identifying core team units and considering trade-offs between fairness and team performance; and 3) learning to recommend fairly, with a measurement of graph-based maximum mean discrepancy, a meta learning method for fair graph representation learning, and a reinforcement learning-based search method for fair teaming recommendation. The project will support cross-disciplinary curriculum development by effectively bridging gaps in responsible AI and team science, fair project management, and risk management in science.

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) envisions integrating the skyscape into the transportation network and encompasses services such as delivery drones, on-demand shared mobility by Vertical-Take Off and Landing (VTOL) aircraft for intra-city passenger trips, and, in the longer run, electric and autonomous VTOLs. This possible modal alternative provides a safe, reliable, and environmentally sound option to reduce surface-level congestion. Nevertheless, the history of transportation infrastructure development shows that it is imperative to design transportation infrastructures with the community to find the best balance between these sociotechnical requirements. Much research shows that the design of transportation systems has a long-lasting, often discriminatory effect that reinforces existing socio-economic inequality. As UAM is being developed as a new transportation mode, we are at an opportune moment to design its infrastructure to provide effective and equitable air mobility for all, avoiding our past mistakes. 

This project will focus on understanding the preferences, attitudes, and concerns of all stakeholders of UAM, including the potential users of UAM, the general public in different communities who may be positively and/or adversely affected by UAM, policymakers, and city planners. The knowledge elicited from the stakeholders will guide the design of an open-source Computer Aided Planning tool that policy-makers and urban planners can use to design UAM infrastructure that accommodates communities? priorities and enables transportation equity. While the timeline for UAM may be in the future, its deployment may entail significant future investment in infrastructure which makes inclusion of equity considerations and early community engagement critical. We propose a ''Community-in-the-Loop Integrative Framework for Fair and Equitable Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Infrastructure Design''. Our integrative framework will develop methods to engage with key stakeholders to address significant socio-technical challenges, including (a) understanding the community preferences and desiderata in terms of necessary considerations for equitable mobility, (b) developing novel machine learning techniques to generate design options that optimize for community desiderata efficiently and (c) devising community-driven evaluative measures and trade-off decision mechanisms. We address these challenges by drawing from urban and transportation engineering, aerospace, and computer and information sciences. 

The final product of our framework is an open-source Computer Aided Planning tool called VertiCAP. VertiCAP will be equipped with novel machine learning-based algorithms to navigate complex design space options, including long-term decisions (i.e., allocation of UAM airports, also known as vertiports), medium-term decisions (i.e., design of air space), and short-term decisions (i.e., air-traffic control). We will establish a ''community council'' representing different stakeholders. Through continuous interactions with the community council, we will evaluate and demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed VertiCAP tool in the City of Austin, TX and Southern California.